Sunday, March 26, 2017

T-26 Quickbuilds

The Soviet T-26 was one of the most widely used tanks of the interwar period, and took part in many conflicts that are of particular interest to me.

Two quickbuild models which I have assembled are produced by Pegasus and Minairons.

The Pegasus kit is only 15 parts, and goes together pretty easily. The only real criticism I have with the kit is in regard to the track assembly.

The return rollers, appear as single cylinders, as opposed to being two joined wheels. The same applies to the rear idler.

The tracks have a little too much sag, and are on the crude, chunky side, but they still give the appearance of being proper tank tracks.

It has been mentioned that the tracks stick out a little too much on these models, but I only noticed that on the left front corner of my build (I had already painted the tank by that time, so it was too late to do anything to fix it).

The Minairons kit has 10 parts, and can be built as either the double turreted A version, or the single turret B version. The kit goes together without issue, but it seems less detailed and more toy-like when compared to the Pegasus kit.

The main gun of the Minairons kit does not reflect the appearance of the actual gun, but that was a minor issue I could overlook.

A larger issue was that I had to inscribe additional panel lines to define the second hatch on the turret. The second hatch seems to be present on the 1/100 models, so it's unclear why they would be missing on the 1/72 version.

The panel line needs more work to make both hatches match.

The tracks are simplified with a very shallow pattern. The return rollers are featureless cylinders that protrude directly out from the sides of the hull. The drive sprocket and return idler are similarly rendered.

I glued the track assemblies so that the bottom edge was not flush with the hull, since during test fitting it seemed that not doing so would make the tank sit lower than the Pegasus kit.

The Pegasus T-26 was given Finnish markings, while the Minairons T-26 was painted with Republican markings from the Spanish Civil War.

Here is a comparison of the quickbuild tanks with a diecast Altaya/Eaglemoss T-26.

This particular Eaglemoss kit is made with a metal hull, and has quite a bit of heft. It even has the triangle security screws underneath, so maybe it is from some old Altaya stock.